This invention relates to improvements to insulated containers for beer kegs.
1. Background Art
U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,077 discloses an insulated container for beer kegs. A harness is built into the wall of the container and sewn to its handles, in an attempt to shield parts of the container from the weight of a beer keg.
2. Disclosure of Invention
It is an object of the invention to provide insulated, beer-keg containers with improved harness installations.
This as well as other objects of the invention are achieved in a first version of an insulated container of the invention by locating a harness freely hanging inwards of the wall of the container from handles of the container. The length of the harness can then be chosen independently of the lengths of the materials of the wall of the container and sufficiently shorter than the lengths of those materials that there is no loading of the materials by the weight of the keg when a keg is carried within the container.
In contrast, the harness of the above-referenced U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,077 is sandwiched within the wall of the container. That construction places a disadvantageous constraint on the harness, that the length of its members must be very close to the corresponding lengths of the materials between which it is sandwiched. A consequence of such constraint is that the presence of the harness may, in fact, have no effect at all in unloading the materials of the container. This can happen, for instance, if there is more stretch in the harness material than in the material of the container. Certainly, inner liner 10 of the patent always gets loaded by the keg. And, the patent itself appears to recognize that there will at least still be some sharing of the load onto outer jacket 13. Thus, it states, at its column 4, line 5, that xe2x80x9cthe weight will not bear entirely upon the bottom panel 27 of the jacketxe2x80x9d.
Experience with the first version of the insulated container of the invention has led to an improved, second version. Thus, beer kegs are very heavy, and users experience difficulty in lifting a keg to then insert it from above into an insulated container. To make insertion easier, a new method of the invention is provided, and this, in turn, is made more successful by a new, second version of insulated container.
The method involves first turning the heavy keg upside down on a floor or the ground. Then, the light, insulated container is easily pulled down, over the keg. Following this, the resulting assembly is turned back, upside up.
When the first version of the invention is tried with this new method, a disadvantage is experienced in that the freely hanging harness falls out of the container when the container is turned upside down. This makes it difficult or practically impossible to end with the harness properly arranged on the keg when assembly of the container with the keg is completed.
According to a second version of the invention, the harness is suspended within the container, rather than allowed to hang freely, so that, when the container is turned upside down, the harness stays sufficiently in position relative to the container that it ends up properly arranged on the keg when assembly of the container with the keg by the method of the invention is finished. Structurally, this is accomplished by suspending the harness within the container from handles of the container and, deeper within the container, from the wall of the container.
As in the first version, in the second version also, the length of the harness is chosen independently of the lengths of the materials of the wall of the container and sufficiently shorter than the lengths of those materials that there is no loading of the materials by the weight of the keg when a keg is carried within the container.